


non-isochronous curves

by Pandelion



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Enemies to Lovers, Injury Recovery, M/M, Work In Progress, probably slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26609428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandelion/pseuds/Pandelion
Summary: “Last night at 8:47pm, the superhero known only as Zangetsu was struck down in a last minute attempt to prevent notorious supervillain Aizen from concluding a plot that may well have been decades in the making. While Zangetsu's attempt was successful and Aizen is being transferred to the Seireitei Holding Facility, the superhero was last seen falling from the sky, having been hit by an unknown attack at the same instant as he defeated Aizen. No body has been found, nor has there been any communication from Zangetsu regarding his continued survival, the way he has managed so many times in the past. As we pass the twenty-four hour mark, we find ourselves more certain that Zangetsu has made the final sacrifice to save us, to save Karakura Town, to save the world."
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo, Kurosaki Ichigo & Nelliel Tu Oderschvank
Comments: 74
Kudos: 259





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [a tumblr post](https://plunnies-n-shit.tumblr.com/post/629800807045398528/bleach-grimmichi-superhero-au-the-beloved). i have literally no idea what i'm doing and this is the first thing i've written for this fandom, but i wanted to throw this out into the world as maybe an incentive for me to write more, so i guess here's hoping it works.  
> title is a placeholder because fuck if i know where this thing is going yet.
> 
> tags and rating will be updated as we go.

" _Today marks a dark day indeed for Karakura_ ," the tv says from the corner of the bar, weirdly loud without the usual clack of pool balls and the sounds of a dozen conversations and twice as many glasses clinking.

“ _Last night at 8:47pm, the superhero known only as Zangetsu was struck down in a last minute attempt to prevent notorious supervillain Aizen from concluding a plot that may well have been decades in the making. While Zangetsu's attempt was successful and Aizen is being transferred to the Seireitei Holding Facility, the superhero was last seen falling from the sky, having been hit by an unknown attack at the same instant as he defeated Aizen. No body has been found, nor has there been any communication from Zangetsu regarding his continued survival, the way he has managed so many times in the past. As we pass the twenty-four hour mark, we find ourselves more certain that Zangetsu has made the final sacrifice to save us, to save Karakura Town, to save the world._

“ _Zangetsu often appeared in fights around the country and occasionally around the world, but he began his career here in Karakura Town and he spent most of his time here, keeping the people that were his neighbors and his friends safe from dangers both big and small. And so we were proud to claim him for our own, a hero that was one of us, a familiar figure in so many ways and one that was heroic in just as many._

“ _His loss is a loss for our community as a whole and we strive to remember the good even as we grieve. We remember the children he saved from the flash flood three summers ago. We remember the office building that he held on his shoulders to allow total evacuation when construction damaged a weight-bearing pillar last fall. We remember how he stood alone to deflect the incoming attacks from countless hollows until backup could arrive when Aizen's attentions finally turned to us. We remember._

“ _T_ _onight we say goodbye to our hero. May he rest in peace, knowing that he has done all he could, that his efforts were not in vain, that we continue to live because of him. There will be a formal memorial scheduled in the near future, but for tonight, join me in raising a glass to Zangetsu, to the hero of Karakura Town._ ”

All around the bar, glasses are lifted into the air in a silent toast even as the news announcer lifts a shot glass of his own to the camera.

" _T_ _o Zangetsu_ ," he says again and the crowd murmurs it back to him, glasses held aloft for another second before everyone takes a drink.

Grimmjow throws his shot back, swallowing around the burning liquid, then sets the empty glass on a bill large enough to cover his shot and a couple more. The tv continues to make noise, but he tunes it out as he heads for the door. No one looks at him, everyone else focused on the tv and the sobering realization that their hero was gone.

He slips out the door, pauses in the tiny recessed doorway long enough to light a cigarette, taking his first drag before stepping out into the empty street. Overhead, the moon hangs fat and low over the rooftops as it begins its slow climb into a sky still darkening into night. The air is cool, but the smoke burns in his lungs and the walk home will keep him warm enough that he won't notice his lack of a jacket.

It’s reflex to glance up at the radio tower as he crosses the canal, but the spire of metal and wire is only a tower tonight, no familiar figure perched at the top. It hits harder than he’d expected, all things considered, and he huffs before continuing on, eyes fixed stubbornly on the road in front of him.

He stubs out the butt of his cigarette when he reaches his apartment building, nodding at the doorman on his way in. The old man nods back, distracted, a tiny tv in the corner of his desk running the same news program Grimmjow had seen at the bar.

Eight flights of stairs later - he doesn’t take the elevator unless he has to, doesn’t like the way it’s a literal box, trusting its weight to a scant collection of cables and pulleys - and he’s pushing open his apartment door, muttering a low “I’m home,” as the door shuts behind him.

The quick patter of feet is his only warning before Nel is barreling into his legs. He sighs, but reaches down, picks her up so she can sniffle into his shoulder instead of his kneecap. “Any change, kiddo?”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I don’t like it. It’s like he’s - like he’s - “

“He’s not,” Grimmjow says, less reassuring and more like there’s no other possibility. He carries Nel into his room, eyes automatically checking the window before going to the figure on the bed.

Bare, human face and bare, human hands, all pale skin and bandages, only the faint rise and fall of the sheet and the flicker of his eyes behind closed eyelids to show that the guy still clung to life.

Nel makes a soft sound, presses her face and the edge of her mask - he needs to work with her more on that, teach her how to hide it when she’s like this - into his neck. Grimmjow doesn’t blame her, really. He kind of wants to look away, too, only he doesn’t have that sort of luxury.

He’s never looked away from Zangetsu before and he’s not about to start now.

~*~

Ichigo feels like a building landed on him, knows the feeling from experience, the way every part of him aches and feels brittle. He can feel the slight shift of a sheet against bandages (another familiar feeling) and the warmth of sunlight against his cheek. It’s the wrong side for him to be in his room, must be in a room in the clinic. The fight with Aizen must have been a real doozy if he’s in the clinic.

He turns his head to the side, where there’s a weight against the mattress, pries open one eye - heavy like he’s been unconscious for too long - expecting to see one of his sisters asleep against the bed. It’s happened before. He can smell something cooking, so it’s probably Karin.

Except it’s not Karin who’s asleep on the bed, but some kid with teal-dyed hair and the rest obscured by a ratty old blanket, curled up next to his hip like a puppy or something. Past the kid, the room isn’t his bedroom _or_ one of the clinic rooms, the walls the unpainted white of a rental, closet door ajar, clothes dumped in a pile next to a squat dresser. 

“Wha…” His throat is dry and he swallows, tries again. “What the fuck?” Better, but still rough, his throat sore like he’d breathed in too much dust.

The kid stirs, yawning, then sitting up, one chubby fist rubbing at sleepy eyes. “Hm?” Then it - she, Ichigo thinks, he’s pretty sure the kid’s a she - sees Ichigo looking at her and startles, throwing herself back. “Ack!”

Ichigo reaches for her automatically, pure reflex to stop her from falling off of the bed. “Whoa!”

She scrambles at the bed, at him, eyes wide and blanket tangling before she manages to get free of both fabric and Ichigo’s hold, tumbling onto the floor and nearly throwing herself at the door. “ _Griiiiim! He’s awaaaake!_ ”

There’s a clatter from outside the room - a pot or a pan, sounds like, dropped on the stove or against the sink. He doesn’t have long to puzzle out what it was, because seconds later, there’s someone else in the doorway, the kid latching onto his leg. Ichigo blinks - that’s getting easier, little less like he’s rubbing sand into his eyeballs every time he closes them and opens them again. The guy has a look, a really weird expression, kinda like panic and disbelief and something too raw to quite pin down.

“Well,” the guy says after a minute, the stiff line of his body relaxing deliberately to lean against the door jamb. “Guess you’re done playing Sleeping Beauty, then, huh?”

“Where am I?” Ichigo asks, frowning. Not his house, not the clinic; he can’t seem to come up with any options other than those and neither are right. “Who are you?”

The guy stays where he is, arms crossed loosely. He smiles at Ichigo’s questions, a lazy smirk. “Where is easy, you’re in my apartment. In my bed, to be exact. As for who I am…” He turns his head, the dark lines of a tattoo on his jaw coming into view and Ichigo _knows_ that tattoo, knows who this must be, even though he’s never seen the guy in anything so casual as jeans and a t-shirt. “Kinda insulted you’d forget me so easily, really.”

“Pantera,” Ichigo says, tight, tries to push himself upright. If he’s in Pantera’s apartment - he’s injured, defenseless, _weak_ , who knows what Pantera’s done while he was unconscious -

“Fuck, you wanna kill yourself for real?” Pantera says, jerking forward a few long steps to push Ichigo back down onto the bed. “You’re gonna rip your stitches, idiot. Stop moving!”

“Yeah, stop moving!” the kid echoes, having let go of Pantera’s leg to peer over the side of the bed. “Don’t die!”

Ichigo’s made a career out of not doing what the bad guys want him to do, however, and he pushes against Pantera’s hands - he’s never felt them when they weren’t trying to hurt him, _kill_ him - and ignores the ripping burn in his side, along his hip. He reaches for his sword, for the power that lays dormant under his skin until he calls on it, for _Zangetsu_ -

He reaches and finds nothing. 

No buzz of power, no sleepy grumble, no familiar hilt against his palm.

No Zangetsu.

The shock gives Pantera the opening needed to push Ichigo back onto the mattress and he shoves him down, one hand firm on Ichigo’s shoulder as the other pulls back the sheet, newly stained with blood. “Fuck, I fucking told you,” he growls, but Ichigo’s not listening.

He stares past Pantera and the kid as they fuss over his wounds, stares at the blank ceiling.

There’s no one inside his head except for him, now.

He’d forgotten how lonely it was.


	2. Chapter 2

When Ichigo was four, he suddenly (not so suddenly, really, he'd had nearly six months of knowing they were coming, that he was going to have siblings, be a  _ big brother _ ) acquired two sisters. One was dark haired, the other somewhat lighter, but both of them were tiny and loud and kind of smelly when he held them in his lap, his parents' arms around both him and whichever little sister he was holding. He hadn’t cared, had been so full of love and determination, so sure that he'd do  _ anything _ to protect them.

When he was nine, he learned that there were other people that needed protection, too.

~*~

Grimmjow decides the idiot isn’t going to die in the amount of time it’ll take to redo the torn stitches, but it’s still an unpleasant sight, a long and jagged gash left by hands not his own. He tells Nel to make sure Zangetsu doesn’t move, then goes out to rescue the stir-fry before it burns and collect the medkit again.

The stir-fry hasn’t done more than sizzle a bit more than usual, but he moves it to the other burner and turns off the stove. It’ll keep for as long as it takes to deal with the dumbass in the other room. The medkit is big and heavy - has to be, to deal with both Grimmjow and Nelliel’s somewhat....unorthodox lifestyles - but he lugs the whole thing back into the room anyway. Maybe he should just leave it in the bedroom, if Zangetsu is going to continue to be this dismissive of his own wounds.

He’s aware of the irony in that thought, okay? He might have issues but at least he’s  _ aware _ of his issues.

Nel has apparently taken Grimmjow’s words literally and has perched herself in such a way that she’s pinning down Zangetsu’s arm, the one that hadn't been dislocated at the shoulder and broken at the wrist (a clean break, easy enough to set) and draped over the non-visibly injured side of his chest. Grimmjow knows too much of how Zangetsu operates to assume that there’s no injury just because the skin isn’t broken, but there’s only so much he can do without taking the guy to the hospital or something and like hell is he gonna do that.

“ - and maybe if you’re good, Grimm will give you a popsicle,” Nel is telling Zangetsu. “He does that for me sometimes, though I usually don’t get hurt this bad.” She frowns at the wound like it’s offended her personally. Grimmjow can identify. “Anyway, you gotta rest up and eat your veggies and make sure you heal up right or else.”

It’s a familiar refrain and Grimmjow ruffles his hand through her hair as he comes around the bed. “Damn right, kiddo. So don’t you dare pick out the broccoli in the stir fry. I know where you sleep.”

Nel glares at him, affronted, chubby hands coming up to fix her hair. Grimmjow doesn’t know why she bothers, it’s not like she has any sort of hairstyle in this form.

Zangetsu looks at him as Grimmjow opens the medkit, eyes guarded and expression carefully held still. Grimmjow pulls out a needle and suture thread, starts sanitizing his hands and the needle.

"Why are you doing this?"

Grimmjow doesn't look at him. "Ain't doing it for you," he says. "Woulda been just fine letting you sacrifice yourself, but the kid's a big fan and she's an ugly crier."

Zangetsu glances at Nel, who has a suitably upset expression on, then back to Grimmjow, but he doesn't say anything, just watches as Grimmjow shifts to sit on the bed, bending over the wound.

"You need something to bite on?" he asks.

"No. Do it."

Grimmjow doesn't ask if he's sure, just nods and gets to work.

~*~

Ichigo closes his eyes halfway through. The pain is almost soothing and really, anyone who would go to the bother of stitching him up twice isn’t likely to try and off him, so he feels safe enough in not watching Pantera for any suspicious moves.

The kid is quiet next to him, apparently not too bothered by his wounds or the fact that Pantera - Grim? She had called him Grim, what a weird name - is stitching him up in front of her. Without her babble, though, his thoughts turn again to the emptiness behind his eyelids, the way his thoughts seem like they echo around his head with no one else to comment on them.

_ Zangetsu, where are you? _

There’s no answer, same as the last dozen times he’s tried to reach out for that other part of him/not-him. And it’s not the no answer of Zangetsu ignoring him or even the way it feels when Zangetsu is asleep: the omnipresent buzz of his existence is just gone entirely.

He’ll have to get Pantera to tell him how the fight with Aizen ended. Last he remembers, he didn’t have the giant gash in his side and he’d still had Zangetsu cackling in his head as they threw attack after attack at Aizen.

Something in how the fight ended must have resulted in the appearance of one and the disappearance of the other.

He's not sure he wants to know if there's a power capable of doing that out there. Aizen's stone thing had been intended to combine human and hollow, artificially recreate the circumstances that led to people like Ichigo and Pantera and all the other heroes and villains out there. As far as Ichigo had been able to tell, it didn't work going the other direction, couldn't remove the hollow influence in someone already mixed up with it.

The echoing silence in his head says otherwise.

A tug at his hip brings him back to the present as Pantera ties off the stitches. Ichigo opens his eyes to look at his work. They're not professional, not quite as straight and even as his dad would have done, but they're competent and perfectly serviceable for the purpose of holding his body together while it heals. This definitely isn't Pantera's first time, but Ichigo guesses he shouldn't be surprised about that; they lead similar lifestyles, after all, and Ichigo's lost count of the number of stitches he's had over the years. One of the inherent consequences of using a sword to fight, he supposes.

“Alright,” Pantera says, “Next time you’re an idiot and tear your stitches, I ain’t putting you back together.”

Ichigo snorts despite himself. “Didn’t ask you to do it in the first place,” he says.

“Ungrateful bastard,” Pantera growls, scowling. If he had his mask on, Ichigo’s sure that he’d flash fangs. "Would you rather have died to a dramatic megalomaniac?"

"Well, no, but...why am I here anyway?" Ichigo asks, because it's been kind of nagging at him in the background. "Didn't think you were anywhere near that fight."

Pantera's scowl deepens. "Yeah, well, there's a lotta shit you don't know, Zangetsu."

"No shit, I'm not fucking omniscient," Ichigo huffs. "Dipshit. And I'm not Zangetsu. I’m - " He almost gives Pantera his real name, bites it back at the last second because for all that he thinks he and Pantera could be friends if given the chance, the guy  _ is _ still something of a villain and names are a weakness. It took a long while for that to be drilled into his head, but he’s learned that lesson often enough by now.

Pantera's giving him a weird look, anyway, so it's probably for the best. "The fuck you aren't," he says. "I saw the bone mask dissolve off your face, I know you're Zangetsu."

Ichigo huffs, rolls his eyes a little. “I  _ mean _ , Zangetsu is the hollow part. I’m the human part. We’re not the same.”

Pantera still has the weird look on his face, which, fuck him, he’s got powers from hollow influence, same as Ichigo, doesn’t it work the same for him?

“That fight musta rattled your brains,” Pantera decides, nodding to himself like that settles anything and getting up.

“Pretty sure all that bleach and dye rattled yours long ago,” Ichigo shoots back. Really, though, he’d thought the blue hair was part of the Pantera look, the same way his own eyes changed when he became Zangetsu. Kinda weird to see it in an apartment bedroom.

“Fuck you, too,” Pantera says, taking the time to flip him the bird as he packs up what looks to be a particularly prodigious medical kit. “I’m one hundred percent all natural.”   
  
“Yeah, hundred percent natural asshole,” Ichigo grumbles, confident that Pantera’s not going to injure him further for being mouthy. He might plot revenge for after Ichigo’s healed up, but Pantera’s never been one for finishing fights he didn’t start.

“Takes one to know one,” Pantera says. “C’mon, kid, let’s leave the delusional hero to his bedrest. Stir-fry’s ready to eat.”

The kid jerks a little where she’d been watching Ichigo and Pantera avidly, but she seems enthused by the idea of stir-fry if the resulting squeal is anything to go by. Ichigo can’t quite picture Pantera in a kitchen - the best his mind comes up with is a particularly feral cat hissing at a hot stove - so he’s a bit more doubtful of the quality of the food produced.

“Stir-fry! Stir-fry!” She bounces off the bed - Ichigo bites back a groan as something gets jostled in the wrong direction - and races out of the room.

Pantera sighs, looking exhausted already. Ichigo doesn’t blame him. “Right. Don’t die while we’re eating dinner. I’ll bring you something to eat in a bit.” The corner of his mouth ticks up. “And if you’re good, I’ll bring you a popsicle for dessert.”

“Only if it’s blackberry flavor,” Ichigo says.

“Keep dreaming,” Pantera says, but he’s still kind of smiling. He closes the door behind himself, leaving Ichigo alone for the first time since he’d woken up.

Ichigo waits a minute, but all he can hear is the kid saying something and the sound of a truck engine somewhere in the distance. He takes a breath and starts cataloguing his injuries.

The gash along his right side and hip is obvious, the bruised and possibly cracked ribs under it less so. His entire right shoulder and arm ache and he wonders if he’d dislocated his shoulder again. One of these days it’s gonna actually break something important and his dad will be full of ‘I told you so’.

There are stiff bandages around his sword hand and wrist and halfway up his forearm. Butterfly bandages over cuts and gashes too small for stitches across his chest and abdomen and other arm. Another bandage around his calf where one of Aizen’s flunkies had tried to cut his Achilles tendon and missed.

Overall, somewhat less than he’d expected, considering the stakes of the fight.

Mindful of the stitches and the bandaged wrist - probably broken, since Pantera wouldn’t have known it was injured if it were just a sprain - he carefully pushes up enough to lean against the pillows and headboard. It’s enough to leave him sweating lightly and trembling with pain, but the initial rush of it settles back into a dull throbbing ache after a moment.

Normally, most injuries didn’t set him back more than a couple days, his powers helpfully speeding along the healing process at inhuman rates. This time...he tries to remember what the recovery timeline for cracked ribs is for ordinary humans, can’t come up with a number more specific than ‘probably longer than two days’. Maybe he should have paid more attention to his dad’s lectures.

....Yeah, right.

Ichigo rolls his head to look out the window. The sky is darkening down towards night over the town, which he can see a good chunk of from here. This must be an apartment in one of the multi-level buildings closer to the center of town. The window looks out towards the sprawl of neighborhoods and parks and schools that make up the edges of Karakura Town and he can’t pinpoint which building he’s in, but it’s enough to know that he at least hasn’t gone very far from where he’d been.

He takes a breath, closes his eyes and lets the air out slow and controlled. He can’t hear Zangetsu, can’t even feel him, but maybe he needs to try going to Zangetsu instead.

Another slow breath, a third, and the outside world fades away as Ichigo turns inward.

~*~

Nel is babbling, but Grimmjow tunes her out, most of his thoughts on the guy in his bedroom. He serves the stir-fry, gets them both seated at the table - Edrad said it was important for kids that at least one meal of the day be shared at the table and Grimmjow doesn’t make it a habit to take advice on his personal life from most people, but he figures Edrad probably knows what he’s talking about, considering the three brats of his own he’s somehow managing to raise.

And never mind the confusing tangle of whether or not Nel actually counts as a child, he treats her like she acts and it’s worked for them this far, he figures he’s doing okay.

“ - and I’m glad he’s awake again, because it wasn’t nice when he looked like he might not - not wake up again, but it’s okay now, so - “

Grimmjow chews on a slightly-more-fried-than-usual piece of carrot, eyes fixed over Nel’s head at the short hall that leads to their rooms, to the guy in  _ his _ room.

Not Zangetsu, his ass. He’d seen the bone mask, seen the black and white shihakushō, watched as both of them fractured away to nothing, leaving a normal-looking guy laying on the pavement in a puddle of red. There’s maintaining an alternate identity and lifestyle, but then there’s going so far as to consider the alternate identity a different person that seems a little crazy to him.

Grimmjow is Pantera and Pantera is Grimmjow: the only difference is that he's careful about which one goes where. Grimmjow is human with an adopted kid, shops weird hours at the local supermarket, has too many old ladies asking about his hair and his non-existent love life and whether he’s eating enough fish. Pantera is a villain, is sharp words and sharper claws and enough battlelust to fuel a good dozen feuds with the heroes of the prefecture. But Grimmjow sometimes battles it out with the old ladies when they both reach for the last bag of tangerines and Pantera sometimes drops by one of the dojos in the area to give a lesson on self-defense for some extra cash.

They're both him, is his point.

(Face masks were invented for a reason and it's easier to explain the hair once the tattoo is hidden. It's worked well enough so far, anyway.)

" - and s-so I said th-that it was, um. G-grimm? W-why's it so c-cold?"

Grimmjow blinks, looking at Nel. She's shivering in her seat and now that he's paying attention, the air is definitely cooler than it was before. He frowns, looks at the air-con, but it hasn't been somehow turned up from nothing to full blast.

"And it's r-raining, look!"

The door to the balcony is covered in sheeting water. That's not rain, that's a torrential downpour. Which isn't too unusual, except that the rainy season hasn't started yet and the weather forecast hadn't said anything about a storm.

And besides, if he squints past the water, he can still see the setting sun and the clear evening sky -

"That's not rain," he says and stands up right as the discordant scream of a new hollow rips through the air.


	3. Chapter 3

The scream lasts for only a split second, but Grimmjow is already halfway to the room by the time it fades, jaw aching with how fast his mask has formed.

He barely remembers to open the door instead of crashing through it, ignores the way it bounces against the wall in favor of focusing on the bed and its occupant.

Zangetsu is rictus-rigid on the bed, fingers clawed into the sheet, back a taut arch, legs bent like he's trying to climb away from something, mouth open on a silent scream. The sheet is covered in a layer of hoarfrost, more of it creeping along the wall behind the bed, frosting the window pane. What had been cold out in the main room is below freezing in here and Grimmjow can  _ feel _ the pressure of Zangetsu's reiatsu, heavy like the air has turned to tar. He can feel bone forming around his neck, down his spine, an instinctual reaction to reiatsu he knows best from the other side of a blade.

It gets thicker the closer Grimmjow gets to the bed, harder to move through, but he pushes until he can lean in and see where the edges of Zangetsu's mask are trying to materialize, eyes wide and bleeding black at the edges. Grimmjow can imagine the process, saw the reverse of it when he found Zangetsu on the concrete after the battle with Aizen, but this is…

Something's wrong with the way the mask is forming, the mass of it fluctuating erratically like it's struggling to find purchase on Zangetsu's face. It gets as far as the corner of Zangetsu's eye, then flinches back to almost nothing only to repeat the process.  The flow of reiatsu is doing the same thing, he realizes, thick pulses as it builds to near-unbearable levels and a fraction of a second where it drops out to almost baseline human before swinging right back up to unbearable.

"Fuck," Grimmjow mutters. He's decent at fixing physical injuries, but this is far outside his wheelhouse. He has no idea how to get Zangetsu to snap out of this safely. "Fuck, hey, Zangetsu, come on. Come on, man, don't do this."

"Grimm?" Nel asks from the door and Grimmjow doesn't look at her, doesn't look away from Zangetsu, just throws out a hand.

"Don't come in!" he snarls and he’ll apologize to her later, it’s not her fault, but fuck if he can deal with her on top of everything else right now.

Zangetsu’s body shudders and jerks and he makes another noise, a more human one, a noise that has Grimmjow reaching before he can abort the motion. On his face, the mask makes it far enough to cover one eye and the sclera immediately blackens, brown iris flaring to gold and Zangetsu looks around wildly before fixing that one eye on Grimmjow.

" _ You _ ," he says, voice that two-tone rasp that Grimmjow has only heard a few times. It makes his fingers ache for claws. "Good."

"Fuck you, too," Grimmjow snaps, automatic. "What the fuck - "

"Shut up, I don't have long," Zangetsu says over him, a little rushed, and Grimmjow shuts the fuck up. "I'm kicking him out. Take care of him. Talk to Urahara or something, the bastard probably has an idea of what happened. I'll be back when I can."

The sclera fades back to white and the mask loses hold, disintegrating and not reforming, the reiatsu disappearing with it. Zangetsu slumps down to the bed like a puppet with cut strings, unconscious. The temperature is back to normal, the hoarfrost melting, and Grimmjow would bet that the weird not-rain would be gone, too, if he went to check.

Grimmjow ensures that Zangetsu - maybe not Zangetsu, maybe the two-tone voice is Zangetsu and the guy Grimmjow usually fights with  _ isn’t _ Zangetsu? - is still breathing and didn’t tear any new stitches, then stumbles back until he can slump against the wall instead of on the bed. Nel peers around the door at him, cautiously creeps over to him. He doesn’t bother warning her off, just lets her burrow under his arm.

“Is he okay?” she asks, voice small and a little muffled against his ribs.

He swallows. “Yeah,” he says. “He’s gonna be fine.”

It doesn’t sound convincing even to him and he’s grateful when Nel doesn’t call him on it, just nods into him.

~*~

There’s sunlight again when Ichigo wakes up, but he’s expecting the plain walls and ceiling this time, is unsurprised to find a warm lump pressed against the hip that isn’t half stitched together. Everything still aches, low and constant, his ribs protesting every breath, his throat dry and rough.

He frowns a little at the ceiling, at the bars of light tracking across it. His last memory was deciding to go into his inner world, see if he could figure out where Zangetsu had gone. Nothing after that. He still can't feel Zangetsu, the back of his head is still empty, so he can assume the attempt didn't work. But it's weird that he doesn't remember anything about it.

The door starts to open and he slams his eyes closed in reflex, keeps his breathing slow and steady. Soft footsteps to the bed, movement as the warm lump is picked up, a sleepy protest.

"You can come back after breakfast," Pantera says, sounding amused and fond. Ichigo's familiar with the one, but the other is…

He'd never really thought of Pantera as maybe having someone at home, having friends and family like Ichigo does. The guy had seemed too feral for such mundane things.

He kind of feels like a dick about it, now.

Pantera takes the kid - Ichigo really needs to get a name, at some point, he feels bad calling her just ‘the kid’ - out of the room, presumably to go eat breakfast. Ichigo waits until the door closes again to slowly open his eyes.

The bars of light on the ceiling haven’t changed. Morning. The fight with Aizen had been in the evening, the sun already set. When he woke up before, it had been evening as well, the city outside going dark. So, it’s been at least two days, he figures, maybe more. He’s never been out of commission that long, not without at least making it known he was still alive. He’ll have to figure out a way of getting a note to Keigo or Mizuiro, make sure no one makes any hasty decisions.

And he needs to let his family know. Karin and Yuzu might actually finish what Aizen started if he lets them think he didn’t make it through the fight.

He glances down at his body, at the various injuries that are going to make it difficult to get home right now. Maybe they’ll accept a phone call as proof of life? He probably shouldn’t even ask if Pantera would be willing to let them come here to see him; Ichigo knows that if he were in that position, there would be no way he’d let the family of his rival know where his mundane persona lives.

...Does Pantera still count as a rival if Ichigo’s lost his powers? Or does it just make Ichigo a liability that knows a bit too much about him now?

Too many questions, he decides. Better to focus on the answers he already has.

He’s alive, if injured. He’s in Pantera’s apartment. Aizen is, presumably, dead or defeated. It’s morning. He’s lost his powers, though it’s yet to be seen if it’s permanent or temporary.

Pretty short list, all things considered.

Ichigo sighs. Mundane healing really sucks. Normally, he'd be healed enough already to move around, get up and walk. Right now, though, he thinks he'd be lucky to even make it upright, which means he's bed-ridden for the foreseeable future.

"This is fucking boring," he says it loud after a few minutes of staring at the ceiling. He's banking on Pantera still having enhanced hearing. "Full offense, furbrain, but your room is  _ boring _ . Don't you even have any band posters or something to put on the walls?"

The door opens a moment later, Pantera leaning nonchalantly against the door jamb. "Yeah, so, we ate all the breakfast, so I guess you'll just have to wait for lunch to eat," he drawls.

Ichigo grins and starts to reply, but the kid pokes her head out from behind Pantera's leg, looking adorably confused. "No, we didn't, Grimm, you saved a plate for him, too!"

“Tch,” Pantera says. Ichigo snorts at the guy’s annoyed expression.

“It’s alright,” he says. “I didn’t want burnt eggs for breakfast, anyway.”

“I don’t burn eggs,” Pantera huffs as the kid wiggles her way into the room and up onto the bed again.

“Grimm’s a good cook!” she declares and Ichigo raises an eyebrow.

“Man, I’m just learning all sorts of things,” he says. “A kid, an apartment, a good cook. What’s next, you secretly like to visit cat cafes?”

“Cats don’t like Grimm,” the kid says with all the confidence and lack of filter of youth. Ichigo bites his lip, watching Pantera’s face go red.

“Alright, that’s enough, don’t you have homework to do or something,” Pantera growls, stalking into the room and picking up the kid by the back of her - Ichigo had thought it was a blanket, but maybe it’s more of a tunic? - clothes and setting her down in the hall. The last Ichigo sees of her before Pantera closes the door is a wobbly pout.

“Such a cold parent,” he teases when Pantera turns around.

“Oh, shut up. She’s not my kid, anyway.”

“Oh?”

Pantera blinks at him, one eyebrow lifting slowly, the red flush fading away. “Really? You didn’t - well, I guess you’re probably more used to seeing her with four legs, not two.”

Ichigo isn’t entirely proud of how long it takes to connect the dots. Four legs, teal hair, keeps company with Pantera… “Get out. No way is that Gamuza,” he says.

Pantera shrugs, sitting down on the edge of the bed, careful not to accidentally bump against Ichigo. “Well, she’s Nel - Nelliel - like this, but yeah. That’s her.”

“I didn’t think she was that...young,” Ichigo says, looking at the door with a frown. Gamuza has always been...if not entirely mature, then definitely  _ older _ than a child.

“Blame Nnoitra for that,” Pantera says. He gestures vaguely at his face. “Caught her cold about...seven years ago, now? Damaged her mask and caused the age regression when she’s not transformed. She’s still her, just...a kid.” He looks at Ichigo out of the corner of his eye. “And I don’t think I need to tell you that this ain’t public info, yeah?”

Ichigo turns his frown on him. “I’m not a villain, I’m not gonna use it against her,” he says. “Or you, for that matter.” It kind of hurts that after all this time of fighting him, that Pantera would still think him capable of taking advantage like that.

Pantera rolls his eyes. “Fucking goody-two-shoes,” he says, but it lacks the bite of an insult. Ichigo just rolls his eyes right back, letting the familiar interaction ease the sting.

“Anyway,” Pantera continues. “How you feeling.”

“You mean aside from the various injuries that may or may not have been life-threatening without prompt medical attention?” Ichigo asks, dry. Pantera doesn’t bother responding, just watches him with that flat, considering stare that usually pisses Ichigo off during fights. He sighs and considers it seriously. “Still feels like a building fell on me,” he says after a moment. “But not any worse. Bit of a headache, but otherwise the same as I felt yesterday.”

Pantera considers him for another moment, then nods. Ichigo wonders if that was the answer he was looking for or not. “What do I call you, then, if not Zangetsu?”

Fuck. There hadn’t been much push back yesterday when Ichigo protested at being called Zangetsu, he wasn’t expecting it now. He hesitates, but really, there are only so many choices. “Call me Ichigo,” he says, resigned. 

“That’s a dumb name,” Pantera declares immediately.

“Fuck you, no it’s not!” Ichigo retorts. “And like you’ve got room to throw stones,  _ Grimm _ .”

Pantera snarls at him, but there’s a distinct lack of follow-through, which leaves Ichigo feeling weirdly giddy, heart beating faster. Pantera doesn’t actually want to kill him, hasn’t taken advantage of Ichigo’s weakness to get rid of him, probably won’t change his mind if he hasn’t by now. Bit of a rush, that.

“What kind of name is that, anyway. Grimm. Sounds foreign. And angsty. Which I guess fits,” Ichigo says, eyeing Pantera’s shock of blue hair and equally blue eyes.

“It’s short for Grimmjow,” Pantera says, looking grumpy as hell about it. “And shut the fuck up. People with split personalities don’t get to comment on my name  _ or _ my hair.”

“Split - “ Ichigo can’t help the surge of hope at the implication, but yesterday Pantera hadn't known that Zangetsu was a separate consciousness. “What do you mean by that? What happened? I remember I was going to -  _ what happened _ ?”

Pantera - Grimmjow leans back a little at that, scowling and crossing his arms. “You almost went feral, is what happened,” he says. “Leaking reiatsu all over the place like you were trying to bring the fucking building down around our ears. This sort of thing normal when you get injured?”

Ichigo tips his head back. Going feral happens, sometimes, when a hero or a villain can’t control their own power and it overwhelms them, leaves them reduced to base instincts with no higher consciousness to impose order. Typically, the only possible response was to contain or eliminate them. There had been a risk, early on, that Ichigo himself would go feral, Zangetsu’s power almost too much for a teenager to hold onto, but he’d managed, with some help, and his grip hasn’t been shaken since. For him to almost go feral now, with Zangetsu conspicuously absent...it doesn’t say anything good.

“Oi, you listening to me?”

Ichigo swats at the hand that reaches to jab at him, focusing on Grimmjow again. “I heard you, fuck!”

“Then respond, jerk!”

“I was thinking!” Ichigo huffs. “It shouldn’t have been a loss of control on my part,” he says. “I’ve been solid for, like, almost fifteen years. But this is…” He hesitates, doesn’t want to openly admit that he can’t draw on his power, is barely more than baseline human right now.

Grimmjow’s looking kind of thoughtful, though. “Does it have anything to do with the fact that your reiatsu is reading barely above baseline?” he asks, an eerie echo of Ichigo’s thoughts. “Wasn’t actually sure you were alive at first when I found you, couldn’t feel you until I was right on top of you.”

Ichigo flushes. “I - probably,” he admits. “Aizen had a...a device, of some sort. From what I understand, it wasn’t intended to remove powers, but it wasn’t complete, either. So it might be an unintended side effect or something.”

“You lost your power,” Grimmjow sums up and it’s neutral, but Ichigo can see the flash of pity in his eyes, looks away before he can see any more.

“Yeah,” he says, tight. “I can’t...I can’t feel it, anymore. And I’m healing slow. Mundane slow, not - Normally, I’d be mobile by now.“

There’s a moment of silence between them as they consider that, the implications of Ichigo without his power.

“Guess they were kind of right, then,” Grimmjow says. “Declaring you dead. Memorial service is still gonna be awkward as fuck, though.”

“Wait, what? They declared me dead?” Ichigo looks at him, alarmed.

“Mm. Was very tragic and everything. Mass toast to your memory, the works,” Grimmjow says, looking entirely too nonchalant for discussing the legal death of his rival. “Memorial service is set for...Saturday, I think? In a couple days. I hear it’s gonna be real nice.”

“Fuck,” Ichigo groans. So much for making sure no one made any hasty decisions. “I need to borrow your phone. Yuzu’s gonna kill me for real, fuck.”

Grimmjow’s giving him a dubious eyebrow and Ichigo sighs. “You’ve got a kid? I’ve got sisters,” he says. “And you’d think they’d be cool about all this, given I’ve been doing it for forever, but if I’ve been out of it long enough the city’s decided that Zangetsu is dead, they’re going to kill me themselves for making them worry so much. They were bad enough when I was fifteen, they’re scary as hell now.”

“Right,” Grimmjow says, clearly not getting the full depth of just how fucked Ichigo is, but just as clearly amused at the idea of Ichigo being scared of his sisters. “You want breakfast first, then? Last meal and all?”

Ichigo groans again. “Yeah, might as well.”


	4. Chapter 4

Dark eyes stare out at rain-slick glass, the sky reflected in every shade of grey. It's been a long time since things were last this bad. He hasn’t missed it.

It would be easier to bear if there were a more mundane reason for it, but to have it imposed so suddenly...

"I hate the rain," he says out loud, but there's no answer and the rain keeps falling.

~*~

The eggs are, as promised, not burnt.

Ichigo makes a show of inspecting them anyway, because irritating Grimmjow is something he can still do and it’s pretty funny to watch Grimmjow wind up tighter and tighter without being able to punch Ichigo for it. Fork held awkwardly in his left hand - his fingers had refused to cooperate when he tried using his right - he pokes at the eggs, humming thoughtfully.

"Just fucking eat them, idiot," Grimmjow growls from where he's leaning against the wall. 

Ichigo ignores him and keeps poking at the eggs, carefully flipping over every piece. 

“They’re not burnt,” Grimmjow groans. “Just - just  _ eat them _ .”

“But then you’ll stop making funny faces,” Ichigo says, mild, and bites his bottom lip when Grimmjow actually snarls at him. It’s only funny so long as Grimmjow doesn’t actually retaliate and he’s not entirely sure if openly laughing at him would be a step too far.

Deciding that he’s probably riled Grimmjow enough for one morning, Ichigo scoops up a bite of eggs and starts to eat.

Tries to, anyway, because it’s harder to actually eat with his non-dominant hand than he’d expected it to be. It’s  _ doable _ , but it’s not exactly a quick or pretty process. Grimmjow is quiet, now, watching, and Ichigo ignores him as best he can, feeling his cheeks warm with embarrassment when the third bite in a row only half makes it into his mouth, the other half falling back to the plate.

At least Grimmjow gave him a fork. He doesn’t want to think about trying to eat left-handed with chopsticks.

The eggs are still warm, despite his delay in eating, and the first few bites serve to remind him that it's been almost four days since he last ate anything of substance. The fact that he's not actually starving is something of a surprise, but he's taking it as a good sign that his powers aren't gone entirely. He’s still capable of drawing in ambient reishi to bolster his body and stave off pesky things like hunger and thirst.

But reishi absorption only goes so far, especially for someone like him, and actual food will go a lot further. He cleans the plate, eating everything he can manage, then trades the fork for a glass of water that Grimmjow had brought with the plate.

Grimmjow takes both when he's done. "I'll be back with a phone," is all he says before leaving Ichigo alone again.

Ichigo leans against the pillow, comfortably full, and closes his eyes. He’s never heard of a super regaining powers once lost, hasn’t known anyone personally that had lost their powers, either. Even if he still has some minor abilities, it might not mean anything, so no use getting his hopes up too much.

He wishes he knew more about that device Aizen had been trying to use.

Grimmjow is only gone for a few minutes and Ichigo opens his eyes again when he comes back into the room, a phone held in one hand. He comes to stand next to the bed and holds it towards Ichigo, but just out of easy reach.

“No funny business, okay?” Grimmjow says, frowning.

Ichigo rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, just give it here, don’t be a dick.”

Grimmjow rolls his eyes right back, exaggerated and clearly mocking, but he drops the phone into Ichigo’s lap before retreating to lean against the wall again. It’s a flip phone, no password or anything, and Ichigo wonders if it’s actually Grimmjow’s cell phone or if it’s a burner phone, one that can't be traced back to him.

He dials the clinic’s line from memory, taking a breath as he presses the call button, then lifts it to listen to the ring.

“Kurosaki Clinic, how can I help you?” Karin asks when the call connects, sounding vaguely bored and for a second, Ichigo’s confused at getting the business response. He pulls the phone away from his face to look at it, like the technology has betrayed him, only to remember that, right, this is Grimmjow’s phone, the caller ID isn’t going to show up as him. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

“Ah, Karin, it’s me,” Ichigo says, bringing the phone back to his ear. He can see Grimmjow out of the corner of his eye, one eyebrow halfway to his hairline, and he looks the other way.

There’s a moment of silence, then - “YUZU, IT’S ICHIGO ON THE PHONE!” and Ichigo winces a little because  Karin’s never been one for showing emotions she thought made her vulnerable, but Yuzu’s worn her heart on her sleeve her whole life. He’s going to have to listen to her cry at him over a phone that isn’t even his and he’s going to have to tell her that he has no idea when he’ll be able to come home.

He tips his head back to stare at the ceiling and wonders if it’s too late to just...hang up.

“Ichi-nii!” Yuzu says, a little breathless and already sounding like she’s on the verge of tears.

Yeah, too late.

“Hey, Yuzu,” Ichigo says and then he’s quiet as she breaks into sobs interspersed with beratement for letting them think he was maybe  _ dead _ for  _ four days _ and not  _ calling them _ or coming  _ home _ and she  _ hates _ superheroes, she  _ does _ , she’ll  _ never  _ forgive Aizen or Spoonhead -

(“Spoonhead? The fuck?” Grimmjow asks. Ichigo ignores him.)

\- or  _ any _ of them and when is he coming home, she’ll wash his sheets and make his favorite curry and - 

“Hey, hey, Yuzu,” Ichigo interrupts, heart twinging when she hiccups. “Hey, uh, something happened, in the fight. I’m not...I’m fine, I’m gonna be fine, but I’m not healing as fast as I normally do and uh - “

“You’re  _ hurt _ ?” she asks and then she’s off again, only this time she’s dragging up past injuries and worries and this part is familiar, at least, listening to his little sister scold him for letting himself get hurt. He’s smiling faintly by the time she winds down enough for him to interrupt again.

“Yuzu, I’m going to be fine,” he says, firm enough that hopefully it’s believable over the phone. “But I’m not going to be able to come home for a little while, not until I heal up a bit more, okay?”

Yuzu sniffs, but doesn’t immediately demand he come home, so he figures it’s going to be okay. “Can we come see you?” she asks, voice small, and he sighs, glancing at Grimmjow and wincing a little.

His little sisters plus Grimmjow isn't a combination he's keen on testing anytime soon and, judging by Grimmjow's scowl, he's of a similar opinion.

“I don’t think that’s the best idea, either, Yuzu,” Ichigo says. “I’m, uh, I’m staying with a friend and he’s, uh, he’s pretty private and - “

“Are you staying with Ishida-san?”

“Uh, no, it’s a - a work friend,” Ichigo says and prays she doesn’t ask anything more about it. Bad enough he’s stretching the truth with claiming Grimmjow as a friend, but he doesn’t want to imagine his sisters’ reactions if they figure out the truth. He hasn’t exactly been quiet in his frustrations about fighting Pantera in the past, after all.

“I see,” Yuzu says, clearly suspicious. Ichigo supposes this is what he gets for having a small social circle for so long; his sisters know all of his friends and it’s weird when he brings up someone new. “You’ll come home as soon as you can, though?”

“I’ll come home as soon as I can,” Ichigo promises, relieved.

“Okay,” Yuzu says, clearly reluctant. “I hope you feel better soon, Ichi-nii. I - oh, Karin wants to talk to you again.”

“Put her on, then,” Ichigo says. “Thanks, Yuzu.”

There’s the sound of the phone changing hands, then Karin’s voice comes through. “Tell your friend I’ll kick his ass if he doesn’t take care of you,” she says and Grimmjow snorts.

Ichigo shoots a look at him, cheeks going warm. “Yeah, I’ll, uh, I’ll pass it on.”

"And Ichi-nii…" Karin's voice goes soft, a little…if it were anyone else, he'd call it unsure, except Karin doesn't do uncertainty, has spent the last few years  _ really _ not doing uncertainty.

"Yeah?"

"You're really going to be okay?"

Ichigo closes his eyes. God, he wishes he could be having this conversation in person. "Yeah, Karin. I'm really going to be okay."

No need to tell them about his loss of powers. It might be a temporary thing, after all, nothing to worry about. And even if it's not, well. They were never the biggest fans of his decision to use his powers the way he has.

"Good," Karin says and Ichigo feels like shit anyway. "That's good. I didn’t believe the news, anyway. Like you’d get taken out by that jerk. See you when you’re feeling better, then."

Yuzu's voice chimes in again, a little distant. "Come home soon, Ichi-nii! I'll make curry!"

Ichigo smiles a little at that, glad no one but Grimmjow can see it.

"Yeah. I'll look forward to it."

~*~

Grimmjow waits until Ichigo has set the phone down on the bed to say anything. "Thought you said they'd be worse than dying," he says. "They didn't seem that bad to me." Kinda weepy, but well-meaning. Grimmjow figures that's part and parcel of what family usually means for most people.

Ichigo snorts softly, the corner of his mouth turning up just a little. "That's because they're not  _ your  _ sisters," he says and Grimmjow has to concede that point. As far as he knows, he doesn't have any siblings, so maybe he's missing some context. "And there's only so much they can do over the phone. It's worse in person."

Grimmjow hums acknowledgement, not really having anything else to say to that. Ichigo doesn’t say anything more and Grimmjow’s thoughts drift sideways to consider their situation again.

He’d spent some time last night after Nel had fallen asleep, nursing a beer and thinking about all the nonsense that’s happened since Ichigo woke up.

The voice - Zangetsu, he reminds himself, the voice was Zangetsu - had told him to talk to Urahara. As if it were something simple and Urahara Kisuke wasn’t the biggest urban legend of the Japanese superhero and supervillain communities.

Find the guy who was said to not have any special power of his own, but could never be found by anyone actually looking for him? The guy who was rumored to be the cause of the rise of super-powered beings, who had first cracked the barrier between worlds? The guy who, it was whispered, had tread in the domain of the gods and had stolen secrets no mortal should know?

Yeah, Grimmjow would get right on that. 

Not.

Zangetsu had probably meant a different Urahara, one that was real and not some bogeyman built out of half-truths and rumors. Which presents its own challenges, primary of which is that Grimmjow has no idea of Zangetsu’s social circle, let alone Ichigo’s. Not until now, anyway.

“Grimmjow?”

He blinks, looks at Ichigo, who is giving him a concerned look. Shit, had he really spaced out? He scowls, jaw tightening.

“I’m going out. Don’t die while I’m not here to fix you again,” he says, sharp, and takes two steps forward to grab the phone, stuffing it into his pocket and turning on his heel to leave.

“I’ll do my best,” Ichigo mutters behind him. “But no promises. This room might bore me to death.”

Grimmjow doesn’t dignify that with a response, just shuts the door behind him. 

“Nel?” he calls, heading for the entryway. Nel’s head pokes out of her room.

“Yeah? Oh! Are you going to the store?” She looks excited by the prospect and Grimmjow shrugs.

“I’m going out. I can stop at the store on my way home, though. You want something?”

Nel bites her lip, hands fisted nervously in her blanket wrap. Even after seven years of seeing it everyday, it’s still almost criminally cute. “Spicy sticks?” she asks, hopeful.

Grimmjow sighs. He doesn't know why he ever expects her to ask for something different. “I don’t know how you can stand that shit,” he says. “You cry every time. Whatever. Don’t bother Ichigo while I’m gone, he’s not going to be up for playing, okay?”

She pouts at him, which just makes him glad he’d thought to say something. Ichigo might normally be resilient enough to stand up to what Nel considered playtime, but between lost powers and that stitched up gash, he’d be more likely to kick the bucket than not. Maybe when Ichigo healed up, Grimmjow would let Nel at him, see how the guy stood up to hyper six-year old energy.

He shrugs on his jacket, shoves his feet into his shoes, puts on a facemask and leaves, locking the door behind him. Eight flights of stairs and a nod at the doorman later, he’s stepping out into the cool morning.

He pauses under the awning, tugs the mask down so he can light up a cigarette, hooks a thumb into a belt loop and taps his fingers against the phone in his pocket. 

Finding Urahara might be a pipedream, but he’s got a phone number and a couple of names and it’s more than he’d had last night when he’d started thinking about ways to help get Ichigo back on his feet and out of his apartment. It’s been a year or two since Grimmjow last needed to actually track information down, but he bets Shawlong can still make data sit up and do tricks. He’ll be able to piece the bits that Grimmjow has into actual clues.

Maybe it’s not quite how he’d pictured finding out about the person behind Zangetsu’s mask, but it’s still a hunt of sorts. Grimmjow grinds the butt of the cigarette into the asphalt, slips the mask back into place, then heads for the train station, grinning behind the thin fabric.

He does enjoy a good hunt.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter puts us over 10k words and I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that's left a kudos or a comment or bookmarked this fic or subscribed for notifications on new chapters. I've been bad at responding to comments, but every single one of you puts a smile on my face daily and you make it a joy to keep writing, so thank you all from the bottom of my heart. <3
> 
> I do hope you guys don't mind my short chapters, but it's really been helping me keep writing and posting, so I figure the trade-off is worth it. That said, I think this is the longest chapter so far, clocking in at over 3k, so I hope you enjoy!

Ichigo hadn’t actually been entirely kidding when he said that Grimmjow’s room might bore him to death.

Grimmjow's room is _extra really_ _boring_ when Ichigo can't even get out of bed to snoop around. The window only provides so much to look at - mostly sky and the tops of a couple of other buildings, windows reflecting in the morning sun - and the décor is somehow even less interesting. He’d never thought a villain would live somewhere so normal.

Not that he’d spent any time thinking about Pantera’s living situation, but he would have expected something more...more. A punching bag, movie posters, an electric guitar, a scoreboard for how many heroes he’s taken out -  _ something _ more interesting than white walls and slightly mismatched furniture.

It's like Grimmjow doesn't even live here, like it's just a place to sleep and store his clothes.

Maybe the rest of the apartment is more interesting.

Ichigo's about ready to start guesstimating how many tatami mats would fit in the room, because it beats trying to take a nap midmorning after sleeping the majority of four days already, when the door swings slowly open.

He'd forgotten he wasn't alone in the apartment.

"I'm awake," he says when nothing else happens. "You can come in."

Nel peeks around the door at him and he wonders if Grimmjow said something to make her cautious. She hadn't been shy about climbing onto the bed with him before.

Ichigo smiles at her. He likes to think he’s not half bad with kids. Not as good as Chad, of course, but he’s no Ishida. And even if Nel isn’t  _ actually _ a kid, she looks and acts and talks like one, so. He’ll take a page out of Grimmjow’s book for now, try to roll with treating her like a kid when she’s like this.

He can kind of see Gamuza in her now that he’s looking, though, the slant of her eyes, the slash of a familiar scar across her forehead, half-hidden behind the fall of her hair. Nnoitra’s fault, Grimmjow had said. Ichigo’s suddenly really glad for the half dozen times he’s smacked that guy into the side of a bridge over the years.

“Grimm said not to bother you,” she says.

“Oh,” Ichigo says. It makes sense, kids and injuries rarely mix well, but she hadn’t been much of a bother before. “It’s alright, you’re not bothering me.”

She still hesitates by the door for a moment before making up her mind and darting over to the bed, scrambling up to sit next to Ichigo’s leg, carefully not touching him.

Ichigo smiles at her again, gets a tentative smile back. He gives her a moment and is rewarded when she abruptly blurts out, “Is your name really Itsugo?”

Ah.

“Well, no, my name is Ichigo,” he corrects. “But yeah, that’s my real name. Zangetsu is...it’s my hero name, like Pantera is Grimmjow’s villain name.” Which isn’t entirely correct, but he’s not going to get into the details of how Zangetsu is actually a separate part of him, that he’s just borrowing the form and the name.

Nel frowns at him, like she’s not sure about that, but she nods after a moment. “Grimm says heroes and villains can’t be friends,” she says, with a weird hopeful tilt to the words. It takes Ichigo a second to realize it’s actually a question, that she’s wanting him to say - to say Grimmjow is wrong, he thinks.

“Well,” he says again, slow, trying to find the right words. “It’s not...not easy, for heroes and villains to be friends. There are...there are certain differences that are very important to being a hero or a villain and those differences make it really difficult.” 

Superpowered crimes generally boil down to either greed or revenge and those first couple of years establishing himself as a superhero had taught him that once someone was far enough down either road to be considered a proper villain, there was rarely anything he could do to turn them back. He doesn’t remember the last time he actually tried to talk a villain out of whatever plot they were trying to carry out.

“Good guys and bad guys don’t really get along,” he sums up, feeling a little lame for boiling it down to such simple terms.

Nel frowns again, but deeper, like he’d said something personally offensive.

“But I’m not a bad guy,” she says, stubborn. “Grimm’s not a bad guy, either! And he saved you! You were really hurt and you wouldn’t wake up and he fixed you and made you eggs!” She’s nearly shouting by the end of that, eyes wide. Apparently, he’d touched a nerve.

Ichigo bites his lip. He’s not sure how to explain it to her, that just because Grimmjow had fed him and patched him up (and Ichigo was still waiting on an actual explanation for that), that it didn’t make up for the sheer amount of destruction and death that Grimmjow had left in his wake over the years. Didn’t make up for the innumerable wounds that had been left by blade or claw in his skin from every clash with Pantera, protecting a bank or a research laboratory or just trying to buy time for a busload of kids to make it off a crumbling bridge that had been a casualty of the fight.

Gamuza is more neutral, usually running crowd-control or backing Pantera up when more than one hero or rival villain shows up to Pantera’s show. On her own, she’s never been responsible for civilian death, but she’s tied to Pantera and his reputation, which means she is still considered a villain by the general populace.

Not that he can say that to her face, not like this.

“It’s not that simple,” Ichigo says finally. “It’s not...there’s more to it than just being a bad guy or not. I don’t think you’re a  _ bad  _ person, but it’s still… There are people who wouldn’t understand how I could be friends with someone like Grimmjow.” Theoretically speaking. He’s not planning on chumming it up with the guy just because of some halfway-competent stitches and not-burnt eggs.

“Well, that’s stupid,” Nel declares, crossing her arms in a pout. “They’re stupid people. I hope a building falls on them.”

Ichigo winces. “That...wouldn’t really help,” he says.

“Why not? They’d be gone and then we could be friends!”

“Yeah, it really doesn't work like that,” Ichigo sighs, but he has to smile a little at how earnest she is, almost innocent in her confusion about why it wouldn’t work. “Let’s talk about something else, though, okay?”

Nel squints at him, suspicious. “Like what?”

“Uh. What’s your favorite food?” Ichigo asks, hoping it’s a safe enough topic that won’t lead back to the topic of heroes and villains being friends.

Nel is stubborn for a moment, still pouting at him, but then she relaxes with a sigh. “I like the spicy sticks,” she says.

“Spicy...sticks?”

“Yeah!” Nel brightens a little when it’s clear Ichigo has no idea what she’s talking about. “They come in a bag and they’re crunchy and really spicy! Like, so spicy it hurts to eat them and I cry!”

“That...doesn’t sound good?” Ichigo says, confused.

“It’s okay,” Nel says and grins at him. “I’m a masochist!”

Ichigo blinks at her for a long minute.

“...I think you’ve been living with Grimmjow for too long.”

~*~

“Please don’t move those.”

Grimmjow gives the boxes piled on the spare chair a dirty look, but finds a bare section of wall to prop up instead.

Shawlong glances at him sidelong, but doesn't say anything more, just focuses on the screens in front of him.

"How long is this going to take?" Grimmjow asks after a minute.

"It takes as long as it takes," Shawlong says, mild, not even looking away from the screens this time.

"Tch."

Technology, Grimmjow decides, really takes the excitement out of a hunt.

"If you're so impatient for this to be done, why come to me?" Shawlong asks. "Grantz is better and faster than I am."

"I don't trust Szayel even as far as I can throw him," Grimmjow huffs. “And I’m not in the mood to deal with Yylfordt’s idiocy today.”

Shawlong tips his head in acknowledgement. "Are you going to tell me why you have such a pressing interest in a local family clinic?"

"No," Grimmjow says. "...Maybe if I find what I'm looking for."

"I see."

"Just find out what you can," Grimmjow growls.

Shawlong hadn't been surprised to see him, nor had he protested the demand that he find everything related to the phone number and names Grimmjow gave him. He'd just nodded, let Grimmjow in, handed him a cup of tea, and gotten to work.

The tea is gone, the empty cup set down on the nearest available surface, but Shawlong is still working.

It's another ten minutes of Grimmjow fighting the increasing urge to fiddle with one of the many things Shawlong has in his office before Shawlong finally pushes back from the keyboard. The printer spits out a few pages and Shawlong glances over them before turning to hold them out to Grimmjow.

"This is everything I could find that might be useful," Shawlong says as Grimmjow takes the papers.

The top page is about the Kurosaki Clinic - a small, family-run clinic a couple neighborhoods away from where Shawlong’s place is - and when he glances at the next page, the Kurosaki family is listed out in tidy black and white, father, deceased mother, son, two daughters. From experience with Shawlong's work, Grimmjow knows the rest of the papers will be personal dossiers, individual information, social networks, any additional information Shawlong thought might be pertinent.

"Don't suppose you found any reference to an Urahara, by chance?" Grimmjow asks, casual, not even looking away from the papers.

"No," Shawlong says slowly and Grimmjow can practically hear the questions pulling up. "Was I supposed to be looking for one?"

"Not really," Grimmjow says. He taps the papers back into order, uses them to flip a casual salute at Shawlong. "Thanks for this, I owe you one."

"You owe me more than one," Shawlong reminds him. "But for now I'll settle for getting you out of my office."

"I'm going, I'm going," Grimmjow says. "Seeya 'round, Shawlong."

"Goodbye, Grimmjow."

Grimmjow lets himself out, folding the papers and pushing them into his pocket. The clinic's address isn't too far away, he'll go take a look since he's out and about anyway. He can look over the dossiers on the way.

A short bus ride and a ten minute walk later, he finds the clinic. It's smaller than he'd expected, a true family business tucked in the middle of a neighborhood, with the living area behind and above the business. There’s a car parked out front and he can see someone sitting in the small waiting room through the window. A young woman is sitting behind the counter, dark-haired and bent over her keyboard or a book or something. Completely banal except how she keeps turning her head to look at - Grimmjow squints at the black bump peeking over the edge of the counter - the phone.

Like she’s waiting for it to ring.

_ Karin _ , Grimmjow thinks. The one who had first answered the phone when Ichigo called. Given Ichigo’s appearance, he’s a bit surprised by how normal she looks. Shawlong’s dossiers had included pictures for each family member, but they were in black and white and small, probably lifted from their drivers licenses or something similar.

Another young woman comes out from the back, talks to Karin for a moment, then waves the waiting person to follow her into the back.

That would be the other sister, then. Yuzu, according to his memory and Shawlong’s information. Her hair’s a closer match to Ichigo, but still not the same. If it weren’t for the fact that the dossier had only listed one woman -  _ Kurosaki Masaki, deceased, half-Japanese, category 5 hollow encounter _ \- as mother to all three, he’d think they were only half-siblings.

Yuzu comes back out after a moment, sits on the edge of the counter to talk to Karin. Grimmjow can’t hear them, not at this distance, with glass and walls between them, but he’s close enough to see Karin shake her head, to see Yuzu’s shoulders round with some emotion.

The abrasive tear of a garganta scrapes against his senses abruptly and he looks over his shoulder, away from the clinic, like he could see through buildings and distance to wherever the hollow is emerging. It’s in the opposite direction of his apartment, far enough away that he doesn’t need to respond. Harribel or the Quincy will get it, most likely.

He looks back at the clinic and finds both Karin and Yuzu staring at him through the glass.

For a second, they all just stare at each other. Then Karin’s eyes narrow and she reaches for something. A second later, the burner phone is buzzing against his hip and he jolts, slapping a hand over it reflexively. He realizes his mistake the second after that, yanking his focus back to the sisters, but it’s too late. 

Karin’s halfway to the clinic door by the time Grimmjow resolves the indecision between keeping his cover intact and escaping as quickly as possible.

“Pantera!”

A flex of power and he lands on a nearby roof right as Karin pushes outside. Grimmjow frowns down at her. Okay, sure, blue hair’s not common, especially around here, but he’s never had anyone come out and straight-up accuse him of being his alter ego before. For her to peg it across the street and through a window... 

“Weird family,” he mutters to himself, shoving off the roof in a step of sonído before Karin can get any closer or start accusing him of kidnapping her brother or some nonsense.

He’s halfway back to his apartment before he realizes he could have asked the sisters if they knew an Urahara. Oh, well.

He ignores the way the phone buzzes in his pocket the whole way back.

~*~

Nel has moved on to telling Ichigo about Grimmjow’s cooking repertoire - stir fry is apparently a common dinner for them - by the time Grimmjow comes back. She breaks off mid-sentence to jump off the bed and run out to meet him when they hear the door open and shut.

“Yes, yes, I got your stupid spicy sticks, get off of my leg, brat!” Ichigo hears and he lets himself smile at the ceiling. The idea of Grimmjow - of  _ Pantera _ \- being domestic like this is both mind-boggling, but also kind of...kind of cute.

There’s movement from down the hall, presumably Grimmjow putting away other groceries and giving Nel the spicy sticks. Ichigo’s fairly sure that they’re just the hot fries snack, which isn’t even that spicy when compared to things like the wasabi peas, but kids tend to be more sensitive to that sort of thing.

After a couple minutes, Grimmjow appears in the doorway, leaning heavily on the door jamb. “Tell your sisters to shut the fuck up,” he says, tossing something at Ichigo.

Ichigo remembers at the last second to use his left hand instead of his right to catch it, then blinks at the phone. “What? My sisters?”

“Yeah, they keep calling,” Grimmjow says and disappears again.

The phone buzzes in Ichigo’s hand and he nearly drops it before he can manage to flip it open and answer it. “Hello?”

“You asshat! What have you done to Ichigo? Get back here and face us like a man!”

Ichigo blinks at the phone. “...Karin?”

There’s a moment of silence, then: “Ichi-nii! If that bastard has hurt you I’m gonna - “

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ichigo says. “Back up, what happened?”

“Pantera came to the clinic, is what happened!” Karin fumes. “And then he ran away like a coward!”

“I - wait, he went to the clinic?” Ichigo’s still trying to catch up to why Karin’s so angry, but he’s getting there. “Is everyone alright?”

“Yeah, we’re fine, he didn’t even come in, just hung out outside like a creeper,” Karin says, but she’s not sounding quite as red-hot angry. “We only noticed him because that garganta opened and I looked up and saw - .”

“A garganta?” Ichigo asks, frowning at the window. “When was this?”

“Uh, about an hour ago?”

“Huh.” Ichigo hadn’t felt anything. He’d been talking to Nel - and she hadn’t noticed, either, or he hadn’t noticed her noticing, at least. It’s just another nail in the coffin, really, one more sign that he’s actually lost his powers. Before, he could feel a garganta opening anywhere in the town or for a good mile outside of town in any direction. 

Karin is quiet for a moment. “Ichi-nii?” she asks.

“Yeah?”

“Did you….not feel the garganta?”

Ichigo closes his eyes. He didn’t want to tell his sisters about his current power...challenges. But he’s not going to lie to them, either.

“No,” he admits. “Something...Aizen did something during the fight, I think. I haven’t...my powers aren’t working very well, right now.” Not lying, but maybe fudging the truth a little so they don’t worry too much.

“That’s why you’re healing slow, too,” Karin says.

“...Yeah.”

“I see.” She’s quiet for a moment and Ichigo realizes she must not be near Yuzu. “Maybe Urahara-san will have some idea of what to do?”

“That’s the hope,” Ichigo says. “I’m going to get a message to him as soon as I can, see if he can figure something out.”

“Okay,” Karin says. “Then for now just focus on getting better. Everything else can wait.”

Ichigo smiles a little. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

“And tell Pantera if he shows his face here again, I’m gonna punch him.”

His smile widens. “Yeah. I’ll tell him. Bye, Karin.”

“Bye, Ichi-nii.”

He shuts the phone and lets it drop to the blanket. So much happening, so much to deal with, he just wants to go back to sleep. No one expects him to deal with things when he’s sleeping.

“If she tries to punch me, I’ll punch her back,” Grimmjow says from the doorway. Ichigo cracks open one eye to look at him.

“You do that and I’ll punt you to the bottom of the river,” he says.

Grimmjow bares his teeth at him in a feral grin. “You can try,” he says, but the rest of his body is still relaxed and loose and Ichigo’s pretty sure he’s actually pretty happy about the threat of being suplexed twenty meters underwater.

“Weirdo,” he says.

“Takes one to know one,” Grimmjow says.

Ichigo opens his mouth to respond, but he’s interrupted by a sharp tapping from the window. He opens both eyes because he'd been under the impression they were several levels up.

“What the fuck,” Grimmjow says and the words are edged with a snarl.

Ichigo looks at the man on the other side of the glass and sighs. “Perfect timing as always,” he says, resigned.


	6. Chapter 6

“What the _fuck_ ,” Grimmjow says again, with added emphasis. He lives on the eighth floor, strange men knocking on his window should not be a thing.

“Let him in,” Ichigo says. “Or he’ll keep knocking.”

“What the _actual fuck_ ,” Grimmjow says for good measure, then goes to unlock the fucking window.

The guy smiles at him - or well, he assumes it’s a smile, all he can see are his eyes between a fan and the brim of a striped bucket hat. "Hello! I do hope I'm not interrupting anything," he says once Grimmjow's got the window open. "I was waiting for a while, actually, to make sure - "

"Get in here before the neighbors notice you, Hat'n'Clogs," Ichigo says, with this weird, kind of resigned tone.

Hat'n'Clogs hums in acknowledgment, watching Grimmjow with sharp grey eyes and not moving. Grimmjow huffs, but steps back to let him into the room.

If it was up to him, he'd knock the guy out of the air. But apparently Ichigo knows him and isn’t concerned about being injured with him around, so Grimmjow’s willing to let it go for now. Still, Grimmjow shifts so that he stays between Hat'n'Clogs and the door. No need to be stupid about it, after all.

"Ah, thank you for the hospitality, Pantera-san," Hat'n'Clogs says, ducking through the window, the drape of his haori blocking the opening for a half second -

\- the morning light dims, the green fabric gone almost black, and Grimmjow suddenly can’t breathe for the pressure around his chest, skin crawling with  _ danger danger danger _ -

\- and then he straightens up and Grimmjow can breathe again.

Grimmjow flexes his hands, tries to pull his claws back in. He’s very seriously reconsidering the whole ‘knocking the weirdo out of the air’ bit, except the guy hasn’t actually _done_ anything and Grimmjow knows he’s got a reputation as something of a loose cannon, but even he knows that he’s got very little cause for punching right now. "Okay, you're in," he growls. "Now start talking. Who the fuck, why the fuck, how the fuck."

Hat'n'Clogs taps his now-folded fan against his cheek, apparently unconcerned about Grimmjow's hostility. "Why is easy: I am here because Kurosaki-san is here. As for how...hm, well, that's a complicated story that we need not get into today, I think."

He stops tapping the fan and tips his head so that his face is half hidden in the shadow of his hat. "As for the who… for now, I think it should suffice that I am Kurosaki-san's friend and am not here to do harm to him or anyone else." He looks at Grimmjow, smiling. Grimmjow wants to punch it off his face. “Okay?”

“No,” Grimmjow says, short and honest. “But kicking you back out the window won’t get me answers, either.”

The smile just widens. “Fair enough,” Hat’n’Clogs says. “I suppose that’s the best I can ask for, given the circumstances.”

“If you are done with the posturing,” Ichigo says, drawing their attention. “I’d actually also like to know why you’re here. How’d you find me?”

“Like I said,” Hat’n’Clogs says, stepping closer to the bed. “I’m here because you are. As for how I found you…” He tucks his cane - did he have a cane when he came in the window? Grimmjow can’t remember - under one arm and lifts the freed hand into the air to pinch at nothing. “I followed your reiraku, of course.”

Grimmjow frowns, but Ichigo nods like that made sense, eyes focusing elsewhere for a second.

“Oh, right. I forget they’re there,” he says. “So...you can still see my ribbon?”

“Yes,” Hat’n’Clogs says, letting go of the air and leaning on his cane. “But it’s faded rather dramatically, so I thought I’d come to see what happened.”

“Aizen happened,” Grimmjow bites out and he stiffens when Hat’n’Clogs shoots him a sharp look.

“Aizen?”

“Crazy, flashy fucker with delusions of world domination,” Grimmjow drawls, crossing his arms. “Had a knock-down, drag-out fight with Zangetsu a few days ago? Currently locked up in max security? Ringing any bells?”

“I’m familiar with Aizen,” Hat’n’Clogs says. “And I’m aware of Kurosaki-san’s fight with him.”

“The Hōgyoku,” Ichigo interrupts. “I don’t know how - you said it’s supposed to work to combine hollow and human energies, right? Can it remove powers, too?”

Hat’n’Clogs looks back at him, frowning a little. “Hmm...Nope,” he says, too cheerfully for Grimmjow’s liking. “Nope, that was never something it was supposed to do! But then, you do have a tendency to change things, Kurosaki-san. So it really shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that you’re experiencing unforeseen effects. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to fill out a questionnaire for me? It would be rather difficult to run tests with you in this condition...”

“Yeah, no, thanks,” Ichigo says, dry. He tugs at the blanket, smooths it out again, but his face is doing a weird thing. Grimmjow doesn’t like it. “If you can see my reiraku...that means my powers aren’t gone completely, right? They’re just...out of juice or whatever?”

Hat’n’Clogs sighs. “That would be the optimistic assumption,” he says. “It’s much more likely that there is something else at play. But I will have to look into some things first to get an idea of what we’re dealing with. We don’t have much precedence to pull from, after all.”

Ichigo nods and Grimmjow decides he’s been quiet long enough.

“Right, that’s great and all, but I still want some answers,” he says and scowls when both of them jolt a little, like they’d forgotten he was there in the five minutes since he’d last said something. He hates being ignored.

“My apologies, Pantera-san.” Hat’n’Clogs says, shifting back a little to lean against the windowsill. “What would you like to know?”

“What’s reiraku? What’s a Hōgyoku? Who the _fuck_ are you, actually?” Grimmjow growls.

Hat’n’Clogs sighs again, but his eyes are a little narrow as he looks at Grimmjow. Grimmjow does his best to not bristle at the focus. “Ah, very well. We’ll start with a history lesson, shall we?”

Grimmjow opens his mouth to say, “No, actually, let’s start with you answering my questions,” but Ichigo shakes his head at him.

“No, it’s important, let him talk,” he says and Grimmjow growls again.

“Fine. Talk.”

Hat’n’Clogs spins his cane against the floor, fingers twisting it in a practiced, idle motion. “Right, let’s see. Where to start, where to start...Right.”

He rests both hands on his cane, the fan tucked away at some point, looking weirdly serious.

“Fifty years ago,” he says. “The first hollow emerged into this world and I brought it here.”

~*~

Ichigo watches Grimmjow for his reaction. He’s heard this story before of course, but it’s very different from the history taught in schools and he remembers his own reaction the first time he’d heard it. There are some things that are factual, were known and documented well enough to not be disputed even half a century later.

The first hollow - so named for the hole that has proven to be characteristic of the species - emerged in Tokyo, Japan 50 years ago. Fact.

It was followed by others over the course of a few days, inciting chaos and military response until….something happened and they were defeated. Fact.

Hollows would continue to be an intermittent issue over the years all around the world, even through to present day. Fact.

Those who had personal encounters with the hollows - were injured in some way or spent enough time with one in close proximity - did not exhibit any ill effects, but years later, their children would start to fly and transform and have super speed and super strength and they would all have the same, bone-like masks that the hollows had. Fact.

The blame for that first hollow falling square on the shoulders of one man? Nothing but theory and rumor.

For a moment, Grimmjow just blinks. Then he comes up with the same response Ichigo had ten years ago. “Bullshit,” he says, flat and certain. “You’re saying _you_ are Urahara Kisuke? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”

The textbooks make no mention of how or why the first hollow managed to rip through the dimensional walls, except to state that the cause is unknown, with studies ongoing. The media is rife with theories, from side effects of private research to divine intervention, but it’s all rumor and hearsay and opinion. Fifty years later, there’s still nothing resembling a solid theory for _why_ , but scientists have finally started being able to track the energy emissions when a rift is about to open.

The closest thing to a generally accepted cause is a rumor that had spread out of Tokyo in the decade following the first hollow appearance. Ichigo had done research into it after he’d finally gotten control over his own powers. There were published papers and a couple books and he’d read through all of them, trying to reconcile everything he knew and had been told.

The rumor goes like this: the hollows came from an alternate dimension and had been brought here by one man, Urahara Kisuke, who was a scientist and had opened the dimensional rift by accident. Urahara, the rumor continued, had been researching something - sources rarely agreed on exactly _what_ he’d been researching, but they all concurred that it had been revolutionary and probably vaguely blasphemous. He was responsible for the hollows, he was responsible for helping defeat them originally, he was responsible for the first generation of hollow-touched, superpowered humans. The details shift from one telling to the next, but the core stays the same.

Urahara Kisuke has never been confirmed as a real person, however. The few people who shared his name at the time were comprehensively eliminated as suspects. None of the known scientific projects in Tokyo at the time were related to dimensional theories and the studies that were related were mostly too far away or were entirely theoretical. And so the rumor has stayed just that, a rumor passed around with enough detail to be plausible, but not enough to sound true.

Hat’n’Clogs - a nickname born from long habit, keeping the man’s identity as safe as Ichigo could manage over the years - smiles slightly. “Ah. Yes. That is what I’m saying. I am Urahara Kisuke.”


	7. Chapter 7

Grimmjow slants a look past Hat’n’Clogs - past the supposed Urahara Kisuke - at Ichigo, but there’s no surprise or humor in Ichigo’s face. He knew it was coming and it’s not a joke he’s in on. Grimmjow looks back at Hat’n’Clogs. Urahara.

Still an average looking guy, if fairly light-haired for a Japanese man. Dressed a bit...traditional, but Grimmjow’s seen weirder over the years and at least the fabrics aren’t dyed eye-searing colors. If it weren’t for the way Grimmjow still feels uneasy around him, he’d seem totally normal. He doesn’t  _ look  _ like someone who had unleashed the hollows on an unsuspecting world fifty years ago.

But Grimmjow’s skin is still crawling from that moment when Hat’n’Clogs stepped in through the window and, well.

Taking a breath, Grimmjow crosses his arms again. “Were you doing science in your diapers, then?” he asks.

Hat’n’Clogs -  _ Urahara _ \- blinks at him, then the line of his shoulders eases a little, the corner of his mouth twisting up only to be covered a second later by that stupid fan, opened and waving slightly. “I suppose I should thank you for the compliment,” he says, sounding pleased.

Behind him, Ichigo rolls his eyes and Grimmjow’s mouth curls almost against his will. “Take it however you want, but you don’t look nearly old enough to have been some bigshot scientist fifty years ago.”

Urahara hums. “Well, I do moisturize - ow!”

Ichigo doesn’t look like he regrets throwing the cell phone at Urahara and Grimmjow can’t help but snort at that, amused. It was a good throw, considering Ichigo is using his non-dominant hand.

“Just tell him, you dick,” Ichigo says.

Urahara sighs, dramatic. Grimmjow is starting to suspect that everything is dramatic with him. “Oh, very well. You spoil my fun so often, Kurosaki-san.”

“Because you’re a sadist,” Ichigo says. “He’s going to punch you if you take much longer and I won’t even feel sorry for you.”

“So mean,” Urahara sighs again, but he lowers the fan and looks at Grimmjow again. “But very well. Yes, I suppose by human standards I do seem too young to have been any appreciable age fifty years ago. But I find it rather small-minded that no one mentions the possibility that a hollow wasn't the only thing to come through the garganta, back then."

He sounds so put out by that, is even pouting, but Grimmjow is caught on something else. "I think I heard that wrong," he says. "You mean to say that you're...not human?"

"Bingo!" Urahara says, pout dissolving into a pleased expression at Grimmjow's deductive skills. "I am not human as one would generally define such things."

Grimmjow glances at Ichigo again, but still no reaction from the peanut gallery. “Right,” he says, slow. “I think I’m gonna need you to start at the beginning and explain this to me like I’m five. And knock off the cryptic bullshit.”

“Good luck with that,” Ichigo mutters from the bed. Grimmjow ignores him. Clearly, Ichigo hasn’t been doing his part in discouraging cryptic bullshit; Grimmjow will be perfectly happy to correct that.

Urahara sighs. "Absolutely no sense of drama," he says. "Very well." He pats at his clothes as if checking his pockets, but doesn't pull anything out. "Ah, I seem to have left my notepad at home, unfortunately, so I won't be able to provide illustrated examples."

Grimmjow is feeling the urge to kick him out the window again, though for different reasons. "Get on with it," he says. "I don't need a movie, just an explanation."

"It's much easier to understand with illustrations," Urahara says, but he goes back to spinning his cane. "But I'll do my best. Where was I...ah, right. Fifty years ago. Though actually...hm. Perhaps some context. Imagine a bubble."

Grimmjow crosses his arms. His claws are gone, finally, but it's still so  _ very tempting _ to punch. "A bubble," he says, flat.

"Three bubbles, actually. Two of them overlapping a little like a Venn diagram, the third floating in proximity, but discrete." Urahara shrugs. "I did say that it would be easier with illustrations."

"Three bubbles, whatever, okay," Grimmjow groans. This can not end soon enough. Bad enough he's got a stranger in his bedroom, but now he's having to deal with bubble analogies. The only saving grace is that Nel is probably still busy with those stupid spicy fry things.

"The separate bubble is your reality, this universe," Urahara says. "Humanity. The other two bubbles are other universes, other realities. In this case, they are Seireitei and Hueco Mundo. Theoretically, of course, there are infinite possible bubbles out there, but we only really care about these three right now."

This explanation isn't going to happen any faster if Grimmjow keeps interrupting, but he can't help it.

"Seireitei? Like the prison?" The prison that was built twenty years ago in response to the rise of supervillains, which... "Did you build the prison, too?"

"Ah, well, I wouldn't go quite that far," Urahara demurs. "But I did have a hand in the designing of it and I may have suggested the name."

“Of course you did,” Grimmjow says, suddenly just really tired of all this. It’s barely noon and he’s had to deal with Shawlong, Ichigo’s bizarre sisters, two trains and a bus, and shopping in the middle of the day on top of that. He  _ hates _ shopping in the middle of the day. That’s when all the old grandmas are out in force and the regular ones keep stopping him to ask if he’s eating enough, if he’s specifically eating enough fish, if he’s finally going to dye his hair back to black and get a proper job, if he’s going to find a nice girl and settle down.

He doesn't  _ want _ to find a nice girl and settle down.

Not that that has anything to do with superpowers or the man sitting on his window sill.

Grimmjow rubs a hand over his face. “You know what. Can you just. Do what you came to do and then leave. We can play mysterious asshole games later, when I actually have the patience for this shit.”

Urahara at least doesn’t look offended by this. “If you’d like,” he says. “I’ll bring my notepad next time.”

“Whatever,” Grimmjow says, stepping back until he can lean against the closet door. “Just. Get on with it, I guess.”

“Thank you,” Urahara says, too cheerful by far. “Kurosaki-san, if I may?”

Ichigo rolls his eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

Urahara pushes off the windowsill to step over to the bed, reaching to pull back the sheet. Grimmjow scowls as Urahara starts to inspect Ichigo's wounds, nodding to himself as he goes, lingering particularly over the stitched up gash.

"Normally, I would offer Tessai's services, but I think it best you just let your body handle the healing for now," Urahara says eventually, straightening. "Given that you're already dealing with some strange effects from the Hōgyoku, I would be hesitant to introduce yet another element to the balance. You said you've lost your powers?"

Ichigo nods, good hand clenching in the blanket and eyes fixed somewhere else.

"Yeah. I'm still absorbing ambient reishi, I think, but I can't sense it. Can't feel you or G-uh, Pantera, either. And I'm healing slow. Well. I'm healing normally, but normal is slow for me."

Urahara nods. He reaches for Ichigo again and Grimmjow tenses as Urahara carefully wraps his fingers around Ichigo's left wrist, fingers pressing against the pulse point.

"I'm no expert, but it feels like your energy has gone inert. Like it's there, but not moving, not doing anything. Very strange."

Ichigo looks at Urahara's hand, then up at his face. "Is that...bad?"

"Well, it's not good," Urahara says. "Usually, when a person's energies stop moving, it's because they're dead. Have you died recently?"

Ichigo shoots a slightly panicked look over Urahara's shoulder at Grimmjow, which Grimmjow answers with a shrug. He doesn't  _ think _ Ichigo died, but there was a bit of time between Ichigo falling out of the sky and when Grimmjow found him in the alley where anything could have happened.

"Not… not that I'm aware of?" Ichigo says finally, looking at Urahara again.

Urahara nods. "We can't rule it out, then," he says, like it's entirely plausible that Ichigo somehow died and was resurrected. "But I think it's more likely that regardless of the Hōgyoku’s intended purpose, what it  _ did _ do was tip your energies drastically out of balance."

"So, what? It made me more human?"

Urahara hums. "Maybe," he says, vague. "I'll need to do some research, I think. Reach out to an old friend or two."

He stands up from the bed and Grimmjow tenses again - he's going to need a long bath after all this, just to relax again - but Urahara just goes back to the window. "I'll be in touch, Kurosaki-san," he says, reaching to adjust his hat. It doesn't need adjusting. "Please do try to not do anything else unique or unusual before then. And then we can finish that story,” he adds, smiling at Grimmjow.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Grimmjow says, almost pleasant. He pushes away from the wall, stepping closer to Urahara and the window. Casual.

Urahara slides onto the windowsill, half turned to go, pausing to wiggle his fingers in a childish wave. “Good-bye, Kurosaki-san. Pantera-san.”

Grimmjow lifts his hand in return, even wiggles his fingers. “Bye-bye,” he says. Then he curls his fingers into a fist and punches Urahara out into the open air. He gets the impression of wide, surprised eyes and fluttering green fabric, and then Urahara drops out of view.

“Gri - Pantera!” Ichigo yelps, stumbling over trying to keep Grimmjow’s identity secret. Which is probably a moot point now, given Urahara clearly knows where he lives.

Grimmjow shakes his hand out and closes the window, locking it this time. “Oh, he’s fine,” he says. “He made it up here to start with, he can figure something out before he hits the ground.”

“You punched him!”

“And it felt damn good,” Grimmjow agrees. “You want a sandwich for lunch? I’m feeling like a sandwich.”

“No, I don’t - what the hell?”

“Too bad, I make a mean sandwich,” Grimmjow says, heading for the door.

“Grimmjow!”

Grimmjow ignores him. Outside, Nel is sitting in the middle of the hall, eating her spicy fries. “Doing alright, kiddo?”

“Yeah, it hurts!”

“Cool. I’m making sandwiches, you want one?”

“Can I put spicy sticks on it?” she asks, following him to the kitchen.

“You can put whatever you want on it,” he replies, pulling the bread out of the fridge. “I’m in a good mood right now.”

Nel chews on a fry for a moment. “Is it because of the guy?”

“What guy - oh, you could hear him?”

She nods, mouth full again.

Grimmjow shrugs. “Eh, sort of. Mostly because I got to punch him,” he says, digging ingredients out of the fridge.

Nel wrinkles her nose at him. “Did he deserve it?”

“Yes,” he says immediately, then rolls his eyes at her expression. “Trust me, he deserved it, okay? You can meet him next time and I’ll bet you want to punch him, too. Or maybe just step on his foot or something.”

She makes a doubtful noise. “Maybe. Are you making a sandwich for Itsugo?”

“Ichigo. And yes, I am, even though he doesn’t deserve one.” He’s put enough effort into keeping the guy alive, he’s not going to fuck that up by not making him a damn sandwich.

Nel at least seems mollified by this, letting him finish making the sandwiches in peace. He puts Nel’s on a plate and hands it to her so she can add her spicy fries or whatever, then plates a second sandwich and takes it back to Ichigo.

“Here, eat up,” Grimmjow says, setting the plate on the bed. He waits until Ichigo picks up the plate. “You trust that Urahara guy?”

Ichigo looks at him. “Yeah,” he says. “I do. He’s done a lot for me over the years. Don’t think I’d be here if it weren’t for him. He can be weird and a bit manipulative, but he’s trying to do the right thing.”

Grimmjow hums, nodding a little. “Alright. I’ll try not to punch him next time, but no promises.”

He gets a snort in reply. “Yeah, well, I don’t think any of us would expect otherwise,” Ichigo says, taking a bite of the sandwich.

“You can’t change a panther’s spots,” Grimmjow says, shrugging as he turns for the door.

Ichigo just shakes his head. “Thanks for the sandwich,” he says.

“Just trying to avoid you dying in my bed,” Grimmjow says over his shoulder. He goes to shut the door, but Nel is suddenly there, pushing her way into the room. “Whoa, hey, don’t bother him while he’s eating.”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Ichigo says. “C’mon, you can eat up here with me.”

Grimmjow frowns as Nel happily clambers up onto the bed with her sandwich, now stuffed with the spicy fries. “Whatever,” he sighs. “Just don’t get crumbs in the bed.” Then he heads back to the kitchen and his own sandwich.

He’ll eat it on the couch like the grown, uninjured adult he is. So there.


	8. Chapter 8

_ “ - truly the greatest loss we could have suffered,” _ the reporter says, dressed in sober black and standing in front of a crowd of people similarly attired.  _ “His actions affected us all, over the years and there has been comparatively little we could do to pay him back.” _

“Never wanted repayment,” Ichigo mutters from the couch.

_ “Today, the city has declared a local holiday to allow residents to attend the memorial being held today across the river from the radio tower where Zangetsu so often could be found."  _ The camera pans around, taking in the crowd, enough people to block out any sight of the grass. There’s a podium set up at one end of the area, up on a small stage, someone still fiddling with the microphone.

_ “The mayor will give a speech, followed by various city representatives, to share memories of Zangetsu’s career as a hero to this city.” _

She keeps talking, but Ichigo is distracted as Grimmjow leans over the back of the couch, one hand planted into the cushion next to Ichigo’s head. “Kinda stupid,” he says, eyes on the tv. “So many people packed that close. Prime target.”

“You never attack those kinds of targets,” Ichigo says, glancing at him.

Grimmjow shrugs. “Doesn’t mean someone else won’t,” he says, which, fair enough. Ichigo turns back to the tv.

_ “ - paper lanterns, later this evening, so anyone interested in participating in that should - hold on,” _ the reporter says and the camera spins, picture blurring until it settles, pointed up at the figure that has appeared overhead.  _ “This just happened. Tiburón has appeared in the air over the memorial. She is well known as a hero from the surrounding area and has been seen helping Zangetsu on occasion, including with the battle against Aizen that cost Zangetsu his life.” _

Tiburón doesn’t move, just stands in the air, feet planted firmly on what Ichigo knows are plates of gathered reishi. He’d been able to do the same, grip the very air as if he could fly without wings. It hurts, a little, the reminder that he probably will never get to do that again.

Then Chad flickers into view, a respectful distance from Tiburón, the bulk of his arms visible and the bone mask over his face. The camera swivels to show him, the reporter excitedly listing off his alias and his connections to Zangetsu.

Then Ishida and Orihime join them. Cierva, Leona, and Anaconda. Jinta and Ururu. Tatsuki. Tachikaze. 

One by one, all of his friends and colleagues appear in the air over the crowd, all of them wearing their masks and uniforms, none of them with weapons drawn.

_ “This is unprecedented, _ ” the reporter says, clearly excited about this development.  _ “All of the known heroes of the surrounding area have appeared overhead, attending the memorial in their own way.” _ The camera rotates between them, zooming in to show each of them in enough detail to be identifiable.

And then it spins again, focusing on another familiar figure, but one that is most definitely  _ not _ a superhero.

Nnoitra sneers down at the crowd, but his crescent-sword stays on his back, his arms folded against his chest. A moment later, Dolly appears a short distance away, followed by Gambler. Trepadora. Fornicarás. Then some faces that Ichigo hasn’t seen in years, had thought dead or imprisoned. Del Toro. Tijereta. Volcánica. Menos. Esturión.

“Idiots,” Grimmjow mutters, but Ichigo’s not paying attention to him right now. He’s watching heroes and villains share sky in the weirdest cease-fire he’s ever seen, all to attend his memorial service.

_ "We are witnessing history,"  _ the reporter is saying.  _ "On the ground, residents of the city and beyond are gathered to honor our hero while above, superheroes and villains do the same, all paying their respects to Zangetsu's memory." _

Funny that he had to die to bring peace, Ichigo thinks. Though, knowing some of the villains, they probably showed up more to confirm the reports than to mourn him.

He tips his head back a little to look at Grimmjow, who hasn't moved. "You and Nel aren't attending?"

Grimmjow shrugs. "No point. We know the truth. Why attend a fake funeral?"

Fair enough. "If I was actually dead, would you attend my funeral then?" Ichigo asks.

Blue eyes slant towards him. "If you were actually dead, chances are good I'd be the reason why. So, no. I wouldn't attend your funeral even then."

Ichigo hums and politely doesn't point out that Grimmjow has had multiple opportunities to ensure Ichigo's death in the last several days and Ichigo is still very much alive. Grimmjow makes an irritated sound anyway and turns away.

_ "There are some notable absences so far,"  _ the reporter says.  _ "I've received confirmation that Don Kanonji is currently out of the country, but Pantera is nowhere to be seen just yet, which is something of a surprise, given the long-standing rivalry between Zangetsu and Pantera." _

Ichigo glances over the back of the couch. Grimmjow's in the kitchen, fussing with something in the fridge, acting like he's not listening in.

On the tv, someone starts singing the national anthem and wow, they're really going all out, aren't they? Then the mayor is stepping up to the podium and Ichigo spends the next hour listening to person after person give what seem like very heartfelt eulogies to his alter ego.

Zangetsu - the real Zangetsu - would find it hilarious, he thinks. But if Zangetsu could hear this, he wouldn't be in this situation.

He touches the bandages still wrapped around his torso, away from the stitches they're protecting even though they've started to itch. The itching is a good sign, he knows, it's a sign he's healing. But it's still too soon to be doing much more than hobble the twenty feet to the toilet and back to bed. Any sudden motion could tear the stitches out again and they'd be starting over from zero.

Grimmjow has been surprisingly hospitable so far; Ichigo would rather not overstay his welcome for a stupid reason like tearing his stiches. Again.

He reaches for the blanket draped over the back of the couch, drags it down over himself. On the tv, the memorial is winding down and the supers that have been watching start to disperse. The blanket smells familiar, like the bed that he’s been occupying the last few days. Ichigo closes his eyes.

~*~

When Grimmjow wanders back into the living room, the tv has moved on to a general news program and his blanket is draped over Ichigo’s still form. He draws closer on cat-quiet feet, looking down at the sleeping man.

The remote is on the cushion next to Ichigo’s hand and Grimmjow reaches for it, turns the tv off. The apartment is quiet without the noise, just the faint sounds from the streets below to break the silence.

Grimmjow doesn’t regret not going to the memorial. Even if Zangetsu were dead for real, he’d hate it, he thinks. And like this, with Zangetsu reduced to an injured man who might never fight Grimmjow again…

He turns away, goes to see what he has in the fridge for dinner. Might be stir fry again, using up the odds and ends that always seem to accumulate.

~*~

The next few days fall into a routine. 

Ichigo sleeps at night in Grimmjow’s bed, is woken in the morning by Nel or Grimmjow bringing him breakfast. After breakfast, he drags himself to the bathroom, uses the toilet and runs a washcloth over what he can reach without either tearing stitches or braining himself on the tub, dresses in the sweats and loose t-shirt that Grimmjow provides. Then he shuffles out to the couch, where he spends the day watching tv, reading the few books Grimmjow has and entertaining Nel.

Grimmjow is...he’s around, mostly, but not as inclined to hang out. Which is fine, it’s not like he’s obliged to spend time with Ichigo just because he’s letting him recover here.

It would be more fine if Ichigo weren't aware that when Grimmjow does leave, even if he says he’s running errands or something, it's because he's doing something as Pantera. There's a certain frustration in being at ground zero for whatever Pantera has planned and not being able to stop it.

Nel, at least, is an excellent distraction from pretty much everything. She has a seemingly endless supply of stories, about herself, about Grimmjow, about things that Ichigo is pretty sure are mistranslated memories of being Gamuza. There is an equally endless supply of questions for Ichigo, ranging from things like his favorite color to persistent questions about his family tree and whether any of his known relatives had orange hair, too.

Karin and Yuzu call every day, too. Grimmjow hasn’t taken back the phone, yet, so Ichigo keeps hold of it. It’s nice to talk to someone who isn’t a child, when the apartment is otherwise empty and he’s feeling restless from staying in one spot too long. The conversations are never long and never about anything too personal, but he assures them that he’s healing, that Grimmjow is behaving, that he’ll see them as soon as possible.

In the afternoon, Ichigo takes naps, the blanket draped over him and feet hanging off the far end of the couch. The evening sun wakes him, spilling through the balcony doors and reflecting off the tv. Usually, by then Grimmjow has dinner going and Ichigo eats on the couch, blanket pulled over his shoulders, while Grimmjow and Nel eat at the table.

After dinner, it’s another trip to the bathroom, then back to bed to sleep, only to repeat everything the next day.

It’s easier than Ichigo would have thought, but Grimmjow is surprisingly normal when he’s not robbing banks or lobbing boulders at bridges. It makes Ichigo wonder, sometimes, whether Grimmjow’s even really a villain. Sure, he’s destructive and he’s demonstrated a marked lack of care for the lives and livelihoods of other people over the years, but he’s not...Ichigo can’t quite put his finger on it.

It’s just really hard to remember that Grimmjow’s a villain when Ichigo hears him scolding Nel for not eating her vegetables.

Ichigo grins as Nel protests on the basis that peppers are gross and Grimmjow grudgingly concedes to a compromise, trading her peppers for bits of broccoli and carrot.

After dinner, Nel heads for her room to get ready for bed and Ichigo tips his head back to watch Grimmjow in the kitchen as dishes are washed.

“How long did you say she’s been like this?” he asks.

Grimmjow glances up at him and Ichigo can almost see him thinking it over, determining how much information he can give out. It’s a familiar expression, though he’s seen it less and less over the last few days.

“‘Bout seven years,” he replies after a moment, attention shifting back to the dishes.

“And she hasn’t aged?”

Grimmjow shrugs. “Not that I’ve noticed. It’s not the worst thing, though. She doesn’t like fighting, anyway.”

Ichigo hums, considering. “Urahara might be able to help her,” he says, careful in case it’s taken wrong. He gets a flash of blue as Grimmjow glances at him without moving his head.

“She’s not broken,” he growls, shoulders tense.

“Not saying she is,” Ichigo assures him. “But she should get a say in her own life, yeah? He might be able to give her that.”

He must say something right, because Grimmjow doesn’t snap at him again, though he’s still stiff. “Thought he was some sort of scientist,” he says. “Is he a super?”

It’s Ichigo’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know,” he says, honest. “I don’t  _ think _ he is, but he knows things that aren’t...normal people can’t see reikaku, right?”

“ _ I _ can’t see reikaku,” Grimmjow says, flat. “Whatever that is.”

“Spirit ribbons,” Ichigo says, frowning a little. “You can’t see them? Urahara says everyone’s got one.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Huh. I thought it was something all supers could do,” Ichigo says. He’s pretty sure he remembers Ishida being able to see them, at least, but he can’t remember if he’d ever asked Chad or Orihime. “I’ll have to ask him about it, next time.”

“Next time?” Grimmjow asks, looking at him again.

“Next time he shows up,” Ichigo clarifies.

“Well, he better fucking knock on the door next time,” Grimmjow says, almost growling. “If he comes through the window again, I’m punching him no matter what.”

Ichigo grins. “I’d like to see you try. I’ve never been able to land the same hit on him twice.”

“Clearly, you haven’t been trying hard enough,” Grimmjow says, snorting, setting the last of the dishes onto the rack to dry.

Nel comes back out just then, wanting dessert, and the conversation is dropped in favor of the usual evening nonsense of winding down for bed.

Ichigo goes to bed a while later, carefully settles under the covers and listens to Grimmjow herd Nel through brushing her teeth and getting into bed. The silence in the back of his head is becoming familiar, he thinks, closing his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapter took so long, holidays and other fics happened, ahaha ^^;
> 
> list of heroes and villains mentioned in this chapter, for those who were curious. their alter-ego names are taken from sword names if known or approximated based on their powers/appearance if not known.
> 
> Heroes:  
> Ichigo - Zangetsu  
> Harribel - Tiburon  
> Chad - El Gigante  
> Ishida - The Quincy  
> Orihime - haven't decided on a name for her yet  
> Apacci - Cierva  
> Mila Rose - Leona  
> Sun-Sun - Anaconda  
> Jinta - name undecided  
> Ururu - also name undecided ahaha  
> Tatsuki - look, it's almost midnight and these names aren't plot relevant yet  
> Kensei - Tachikaze
> 
> Villains  
> Grimmjow - Pantera  
> Nelliel - Gamuza  
> Nnoitra - no alter name because Santa Teresa sounds terrible for a villain and he's too blustery to bother with it  
> Riruka - Dolly  
> Shishigawara - Gambler  
> Luppi - Trepadora  
> Szayelapporo - Fornicaras  
> Yylfordt - Del Toro  
> Shawlong - Tijereta  
> Edrad - Volcanica  
> Nakeem - Menos  
> Di Roy - Esturion


End file.
